Thomas Paine quotes

“To say that any people are not fit for freedom, is to make poverty their choice, and to say they had rather be loaded with taxes than not.”

— Thomas Paine

“When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.”

— Thomas Paine

“It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.”

— Thomas Paine

“The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance.”

— Thomas Paine

“He that rebels against reason is a real rebel, but he that in defence of reason rebels against tyranny has a better title to Defender of the Faith, than George the Third.”

— Thomas Paine

“It is not a God, just and good, but a devil, under the name of God, that the Bible describes.”

— Thomas Paine

“It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.”

— Thomas Paine

“That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly.”

— Thomas Paine

“That God cannot lie, is no advantage to your argument, because it is no proof that priests can not, or that the Bible does not.”

— Thomas Paine

“It is not a field of a few acres of ground, but a cause, that we are defending, and whether we defeat the enemy in one battle, or by degrees, the consequences will be the same.”

— Thomas Paine

“'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.”

— Thomas Paine

“Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law.”

— Thomas Paine

“Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.”

— Thomas Paine

“The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.”

— Thomas Paine

“There are matters in the Bible, said to be done by the express commandment of God, that are shocking to humanity and to every idea we have of moral justice.”

— Thomas Paine

“War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen circumstances that no human wisdom can calculate the end; it has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes.”

— Thomas Paine

“He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.”

— Thomas Paine

“Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles; he can only discover them.”

— Thomas Paine

“It is an affront to treat falsehood with complaisance.”

— Thomas Paine

“Every religion is good that teaches man to be good; and I know of none that instructs him to be bad.”

— Thomas Paine

“Time makes more converts than reason.”

— Thomas Paine

“To establish any mode to abolish war, however advantageous it might be to Nations, would be to take from such Government the most lucrative of its branches.”

— Thomas Paine

“My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”

— Thomas Paine

“Is it not a species of blasphemy to call the New Testament revealed religion, when we see in it such contradictions and absurdities.”

— Thomas Paine

“Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.”

— Thomas Paine

“The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason.”

— Thomas Paine

“We can only reason from what is; we can reason on actualities, but not on possibilities.”

— Thomas Paine

“Suspicion is the companion of mean souls, and the bane of all good society.”

— Thomas Paine

“The Vatican is a dagger in the heart of Italy.”

— Thomas Paine

“There are two distinct classes of what are called thoughts: those that we produce in ourselves by reflection and the act of thinking and those that bolt into the mind of their own accord.”

— Thomas Paine